The abrupt resignation of a governor under fire can be expected to produce political turmoil and instability.

Fortunately, in Richard Ravitch, New York would have an interim governor well equipped by intelligence, temperament and experience to guide the state though its current crisis.

Yes, we were troubled about the legality of Ravitch’s appointment as lieutenant governor last July. And the Court of Appeals decision that upheld it was hardly a model of constitutional scholarship.

But the utility of that outcome, given New York’s current agony, is strikingly apparent.

For decades, Dick Ravitch has been New York’s Mr. Fix-It — the go-to guy called on by governors to help bail them out of one crisis after another.

In 1975, Gov. Hugh Carey enlisted him to head the scandal-scarred and bankrupt state Urban Development Corp.; he proceeded to clean it up.

Two years later, Ravitch played a lead role in renegotiating federal loan guarantees with Washington and winning concessions from municipal unions — two key steps that averted a New York City bankruptcy.

From 1979 to 1983, he headed the MTA — successfully fashioning a financial plan that served as the bedrock document for the eventual rescue of New York’s mass transit system.

Which is why Paterson himself tapped Ravitch to head a panel tasked with crafting a realistic rescue plan for the agency’s capital program. (Sadly, its recommendations — particularly a call for East River bridge tolls — were rejected out of hand by Senate Democrats.)

Whether even a savvy veteran of New York politics like Ravitch has the wherewithal to haul Albany back from the abyss remains to be seen.

But after the continuing humiliations and paralysis attending three-plus years of Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson, New York would at least have a fighting chance with Dick Ravitch.